BALTIMORE — For months, a local woman has been trying to recover her Facebook account after it was hacked.
Despite emailing and messaging the social media platform, she says she hasn't received any help, and the person who took over her account is using it to scam her friends.
“You just feel so violated because they can get you with a phone number,” said Lynn Kramer. “About July 21, a friend of mine messaged me through Messenger saying that her Facebook, she got locked out of her account and needed my phone number to do a two-step authentication. And I'm like, sure, absolutely.”
But when Kramer’s friend didn't answer her message, she called her.
"And that's when I found out that she was hacked,” said Kramer, who then realized someone was trying to gain access to her account. She immediately tried changing her password, but was locked out. The hacker beat her to it and removed Kramer’s email address.
“So, I immediately went over to my Instagram knowing that they're linked, and I changed my Instagram password, and I actually caught them trying to get mine, I screenshot it,” Kramer recalled.
According to the screenshot, the person she was competing with appeared to be in Nigeria.
While Kramer saved her Instagram account in time, she couldn't get back into Facebook.
“That was July, it is now October. Why is it taking so long to get your account back?” WMAR-2 News Mallory Sofastaii asked Kramer.
“I have no idea. They are selling things on my Facebook sending people to my house to pick up the items. Some of my friends have lost money. I email [Facebook] three or four times a day to four different email addresses,” Kramer responded.
Despite all these messages, Facebook hasn't yet disabled the account allowing the hacker to continue advertising items for sale using Kramer’s name.
“My friend, she put a deposit down on a $200 coffeemaker, and they gave her my address. And she showed up at my house at like 8:20 p.m., and I'm like, what are you doing here? She came to pick up the coffeemaker. And I went, what coffeemaker?” said Kramer.
Sofastaii has reported on several other incidents involving hacked Facebook accounts where local users accounts are targeted to better establish legitimacy.
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As long as Kramer’s compromised account remains active, she worries about her safety.
“That’s one of the things that scared me was that somebody was going to come to my house that I didn't know, and was going to get mad thinking that I was a scammer, because they gave me money. The picture looks like me on Facebook,” said Kramer. “So, I mean, I called the police after the first time, and I had a conversation with them, and there's nothing they can do. They basically told me to bug the … out of Facebook.”
WMAR-2 sent multiple messages to the Meta media relations team. No one responded.
“I’ve been doing customer service all my life. That's a huge problem,” Kramer added.
Over the summer, a Meta spokesperson responded to Sofastaii when a former Orioles Player's Facebook account was hacked, however, that hasn't been the case with Kramer. And while Facebook has a guided help page with instructions on recovering hacked accounts, Kramer said it hasn't worked.
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Looking back, Kramer wishes she'd set-up two-factor authentication on her account and was more cautious when accepting friend requests or responding to messages.
If your account has been compromised, click here to begin the Facebook account recovery process.
Or click here for more information on how to better secure your account using two-factor authentication.
Kramer also plans to contact her federal elected officials for additional assistance. Click here to find the contact information for your official.
